Baby's foster parent testifies in Tubbs case

Hearing experts describe Emerald Herriet's developmental markers in the five short months of her life is one thing, but hearing one woman's memories of the baby girl's personality is another.

"She woke herself up laughing," said Rebecca Ostler, a licensed foster parent who cared for the baby from late June, when she was taken from her birth mother, to Oct. 31, when she went to live permanently with Wilson L. "Josh" Tubbs III and his family in Fort Bragg.

Tubbs, 39, is on trial for child abuse resulting in the baby girl's death, a charge that carries the same weight as murder. Tubbs brought the infant unconscious and not breathing to the Mendocino Coast District Hospital Dec. 2. She was flown to Oakland Children's Hospital and pronounced dead Dec. 4. Tubbs was arrested in her death six days later.

Ostler testified on the witness stand in Tubbs' ongoing trial Tuesday about her observations on baby Emerald's developmental progress during the four months she lived in Ostler's home.

A teacher and a language specialist at Early Start had testified Monday -- independent of each other -- that baby Emerald smiled, cooed, laughed and interacted with her environment during a half-hour observation on Oct. 23. Each woman also described how the 5-month-old acted like a newborn when she returned for a formal evaluation Nov. 13, holding her hands to her eyes, not making noises and appearing to be miserable.

Prosecutor Paul Sequeira of the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office posed to the jury Monday the idea that the baby's health changed for the worse after she was placed with the Tubbs family.

Tubbs' defense attorney, Public Defender Linda Thompson, argued to the jury that a pre-existing brain condition may have contributed to the baby's death, and that Tubbs didn't cause the injuries that killed her.

Paraphrasing prior witness statements, Sequeira described Ostler, a former special education teacher, as the county's "go-to" person for special-needs adoptions.

"They felt really comfortable bringing babies to me," she said on the stand. Usually, she testified, the babies would stay three to four months in her home until permanent placement could be made.

Sequeira displayed pictures of the baby girl showing what she looked like when Ostler first took her in and what she looked like just before being placed in the Tubbs home.

One showed the baby girl smiling at a person outside the frame who was saying hello to her, Ostler told the court.

"Some people just have a lot of charisma," Ostler said on the stand. "She was one of the people who did."

"She fell in love with the boys 10 or 15 times a day," she said, her voice choked. The boys she referred to included a grandson and other children in her home, who, she said, would go to her immediately whenever they saw or heard her.

All of the children in Ostler's home loved baby Emerald, Ostler said, answering a question from Sequeira. "She was adored; she was the princess."

Emerald had trouble feeding and gaining weight when she first arrived in the temporary foster home, as shown in a picture where Ostler noted her "scrawny" neck. With a special bottle nipple designed for a baby with a cleft palate and a high-calorie formula, baby Emerald was "fat and happy" by the week prior to her move into the Tubbs home, Ostler said.

"She was vivacious, and she was robust," Ostler said.

Dr. Vicky Soloniuk, the pediatrician who saw baby Emerald regularly throughout all five months of her life, was also on the stand.

She said the baby didn't show signs of "shaken-baby syndrome" during an examination immediately after she was removed from the custody of her birth mother, who a roommate reported had treated the baby roughly during an argument.

The doctor documented the baby's growth, which was at first marked by weight loss but showed steady improvement after Ostler took her in. The primary health concern was her minor case of cleft palate, she said, which wasn't obvious at first, but was found during the examination after the baby was taken from her mother.

Sequeira asked Soloniuk if she suspected the baby had neurological problems, and the doctor said there had not been evidence of that. He also asked her if the injuries she saw on baby Emerald Dec. 2 were consistent with the fall from a 21-inch high changing bench Tubbs told authorities was responsible for the baby's injuries. The doctor said they were not.

Thompson asked the doctor on cross-examination whether she had told another emergency room doctor that day that "the fall would not be an issue if she was not a shaken baby."

The doctor said she didn't recall.

Also on the stand was emergency room nurse John "Travis" Skinner III, who described seeing "several" separate bruises on baby Emerald's face and head when Tubbs brought her to the hospital not breathing and unresponsive. He testified that they were each half a centimeter to a centimeter in size, and each was "more a red spot than dark bruises."

"I was puzzled," Skinner said, asked by Sequeira if he believed the baby could have gotten the marks from the fall Tubbs described, "because I have not ever seen that kind of trauma to the face of an individual who has fallen like that."

Further questioned by Sequeira, he said the marks didn't look to have been caused by the baby falling flat on her face onto a hardwood floor, as Tubbs described.

The trial continues today at 9:30 a.m.

Tiffany Revelle can be reached at udjtr@ukiahdj.com, on Twitter @TiffanyRevelle or at 468-3523.